Wanted: A New Super Eagles Mafia – Frank Ofili

We used to have it in the past.

Yes, a mafia in our senior national football team, the Super Eagles. The Mafia must return.

When we had a mafia in the Super Eagles, we performed far better. We won three AFCON trophies, three silver medals and countless bronze medals. We played far better football, Qualification for AFCON was guaranteed; indeed, it was almost a birth right. Some of the mafia members (like Okocha and Amokachi) were drafted to the Olympics team in 1996 and we won Gold.

At a point, FIFA voted the Super Eagles the 5th strongest team in the 1994 World Cup.

But even at that time, traducers in NFF said the mafia in Super Eagles, headed by Stephen Keshi, was destroying our football. They said the mafia must be destroyed for our football to move forward.

And they started hounding Keshi, the mafia boss, and the boys everywhere. Eventually, Keshi retired, inevitably, and left some remnant members like Sunday Oliseh, Okocha, and Finidi, behind.

Olise tried to keep the flag flying but he wasn’t Keshi. Eventually, he and Finidi too, were hounded out.

Now the Super Eagles mafia no longer exists, and we are playing the worst of football. The unthinkable is happening to our football; we can’t qualify for World Cup, we can’t play well. Even our birthright, the AFCON is now beyond us.

But who or what did they call the Super Eagles Mafia? The mafia was, actually, a gang of prime movers of the Super Eagles who brooked no nonsense from either NFF, fellow players or even the coaching crew. Headed by team captain Stephen Keshi who practically called the shots, they were committed, patriotic, diligent and feared no one. And they were damned good players too. They ate and dreamt the national colours, the Super Eagles. The mafia were impossible to ignore by their sheer character and commitment to the national team.

Keshi particularly would overrule even the national team coach on who to play and who not to play. It was the genesis of the name ‘The Big Boss’. You had to be good to play alongside Keshi. It did not matter where you were playing – whether home or abroad.

When Oliseh became captain, he tried to adopt the Keshi model of leadership. The then Sports Minister and NFF went after him and his assistant, Finidi. The duo were exited from the Super Eagles and denied call-up to 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup

The Super Eagles Mafia as it then was would never have brooked the mediocre current Super Eagles manager, Jose Peseiro, or his preferred goalkeeper Francis Uzoho. The Super Eagles under Peseiro is playing terribly poor football.

The Super Eagles Mafia must return. There has to be a new mafia. Our football is at intensive care unit. Almost dead.

The mafia must come back.